The web app has been designed to be easily deployed via PythonAnywhere but deployment through other services is also possible. The following is an overview of the steps necessary to deploy the application.
Start by opening a terminal in the location (henceforth referred to as <repo>) where you would like to install the application and run
git clone https://github.com/ElliottSullingeFarrall/ldz-dash.gitto clone the repository. If you don't have enough space to clone the repository, try using the --depth option for git clone. To select the branch used for the deployment run
git checkout <branch>where <branch> is the name of the branch (e.g: production or testing).
From the root of the repository, run the install.sh script to generate a .env file. This file will contain the SECREY_KEY variable. Take note of this key as it will be needed throughout the installation process.
Note: The install.sh requires poetry to be installed first.
To have some users be created by default, add a file USERS in the root of <repo> and populate each line with a username.
Next create a web app but don't auto-configure for any frameworks as we will be making use of virtual environments. Make sure the Python version is set to 3.10.
Set the source to <repo>/src and the working directory to <repo>. Make sure the wsgi.py file looks like
import sys
# add your project directory to the sys.path
project_home = '<repo>/src'
if project_home not in sys.path:
sys.path = [project_home] + sys.path
# import flask app but need to call it "application" for WSGI to work
from src import app as application #noqaand the virtual environment is set to <repo>/.venv.
The app is configured to automatically pull any changes that are made via a pull request to the main branch. To set this up make sure that GitHub has a deployment environment named <branch> with the following set:
- A variable
URLset to the URL of the application. - A variable
WSGI_PATHset to the absolute path of the file that starts the web server. When deploying using PythonAnywhere, this path should be given in the web dashboard and will look something like
/var/www/<username>_<region>_pythonanywhere_com_wsgi.py
- A secret
SECRET_KEYthat is set to the key in the.envfile generated earlier.
The application should now be operational. For the first login use username and password default. It is recommended to create a new admin user as soon as possible and then delete the default user. If you added a USERS file these user will also be created with password default.
This project is written using Flask (Python), HTML and CSS. The Python dependencies are managed via Poetry and a development environment is available for Nix users via the flake.nix. For non-Nix users, a NixOS devcontainer is also available.
Once all dependencies are installed, run install.sh to generate the necessary .env file. The web app can be run locally on port 4000 using the test.sh script in wsgi. This script will automatically restart the app upon any changes to the source code.